Jobless Manufacturing Renaissance

Steve Goldstein at WSJ Marketwatch has been skeptical of the so called manufacturing renaissance for some time.

In March 2013 manufacturing lost 3000 jobs.

While the media runs with “the sun will come out tomorrow” story on the return of manufacturing from offshore, actual data indicates a loss of jobs in March 2013 and a growth rate for employment of ~0.6% year over year.

Here’s the graph.

Does this look like recovery to you?

As shop owners, we have open positions for people with skills- but sadly few qualified applicants.

Here is what The Economist has to say about the U.S. Job Problem:

“Americans working to produce traded goods and services earn, roughly, according to their productivity. If low-skill workers in America aren’t much more productive in manufacture of traded goods and services than low-skill workers in China, then they can’t earn much more than workers in China while being employed in manufacture of traded goods and services. They can earn a rich-world wage in production of non-traded goods and services, like sandwiches and haircuts, so long as there is sufficient local demand.

“In other words, the only way to get less-skilled Americans a good wage in a manufacturing industry is to significantly raise their skill and productivity level. If that can’t be accomplished, they can only hope to find good wages in non-traded industries. At least, that is, until wages of less-skilled workers across the developing world come much closer to converging with those in America.”- The Economist

PMPA members are doing all they can to encourage people to gain a skill so that they can claim one of the estimated 600,000 open jobs in advanced manufacturing.

We’ve even created a career database to help people find the training in their area.

We have posted a number of career insights regarding precision machining on our website.

If you would like to claim a rewarding, high satisfaction job in advanced manufacturing, take a look at our material.

P.S. Our goods are “traded goods,” in the parlance of The Economist- and rank highly world wide. I know PMPA member shops that export to Customers around the world including China, (so much for low cost!) Germany, and Switzerland.

Welcome to our blog, Speaking of Precision. As Director of Technology and Industry Research for PMPA, I bring 38 years of hands-on experience in areas of manufacturing, quality and steelmaking. I help answer "HOW?","WITH WHAT?" and "REALLY?"